Dell’s new XPS 14 is better in nearly every way

The 2026 XPS 14 is the correct top price laptop computer we’ve seen from Dell at the moment, with incredible manufacture quality in a skinny machine and accurate performance thanks to Intel’s Core Ultra Sequence 3 “Panther Lake” chips. A bonus: Dell killed its lame “Top price Plus” naming blueprint. XPS is so again!I will’t believe how powerful of a turnaround this new model is from the XPS 13 I reviewed final year, which at the time was once quandary to be the line’s depressing swan tune. The new XPS has improved in fair about every way, with an true physical F-row, better audio system, and noteworthy battery life. Too corrupt it’s wildly costly.$2000The GoodExceptional battery life thanks in half to variable refresh price screensExcellent manufacture qualityMercifully, it has a physical feature rowThe BadExpensive — especially submit-tag increaseKeyboard is well tactile, however latticeless accomplish is no longer for everyoneTrackpad haptics and palm rejection are accurate okayDell despatched us two XPS 14 laptops to test: A $1,999.ninety nine entry-stage model with an 8-core Intel Core Ultra 5 325 chip, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 1920 x 1200 IPS demonstrate, and a $2,899.ninety nine touchscreen OLED model with a 16-core Core Ultra X7 358H, powerful beefier graphics energy, and double the RAM and storage. Every has three Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack.Inform file cardScreen (OLED): AScreen (IPS): BWebcam: BKeyboard: CTrackpad: CPort need: CSpeakers: BNumber of shocking stickers to remove: 1The manufacture quality is impressive. They’re totally a dinky bit thicker than a MacBook Air, however about a third of a pound heavier, feeling esteem a solid slab. The next ingredient that strikes you, especially whenever you happen to’re skittish by XPS laptops past, is that the seamless haptic trackpad has frivolously textured boundary lines and the keyboard has a correct feature row. No extra totally invisible trackpad and capacitive contact buttons for Break out and F-keys. Hallelujah!Whereas these two adjustments are cause ample to celebrate, I gentle personal my quibbles. Boundary lines or no longer, this haptic trackpad is gentle totally okay. I usually deserve to press further laborious for a click to register, and I sometimes fetch an accidental double-click even when pressing frivolously. I additionally usually fetch a misclick if my hands relaxation too carefully on it while typing.Talking of typing, I gentle can’t fetch within the again of this gapless keyboard. It has a paltry 0.8mm key sprint, though it doesn’t feel rather as shallow because it sounds. Here’s because of the its tactile bump at the fracture of every and each key press, which offers it a shockingly solid feel. Despite that tactility, I don’t esteem typing on it. I gain slower, stilted, and extra inclined to typos. It’s a predominant enhance to personal a physical feature row, however this keyboard is gentle no longer for me. At the least now it’s extra of a “YMMV” roughly ingredient.In other locations, the 8-megapixel / 4K webcam seems to be to be like exciting in shining gentle however loses somewhat of its punch and colour quality in dimmer lights or whenever you happen to’re backlit. The audio system are rather accurate for this size of laptop computer, producing a well-balanced sound that you just would crank up without distortion — though they unsurprisingly don’t personal the strongest bass.However the showstopper on the OLED model is, clearly, the demonstrate. The 2880 x 1800 tandem OLED touchscreen will get shining and is continually rich in deep incompatibility and full of life colours. It’s a stunner. The 1920 x 1200 IPS panel on the lower-fracture configuration is form of dull by comparison. It reaches a rather brighter 500 nits and it controls glare rather powerful, however subsequent to the OLED it’s a dinky bit dreary. Alternatively, the IPS show cloak has a uncommon characteristic of its hang: a variable refresh price that goes from 120Hz the total way the total way down to 1Hz whenever you happen to’re viewing static dispute material. The OLED fits that 120Hz, however its lowest refresh price is 20Hz.1/5I gentle dislike this keyboard. I will accurate tolerate it extra now that it’s bought a feature row.These low-dipping refresh charges lend a hand give both XPS 14s unparalleled battery life. On the OLED, I might perhaps presumably fetch over 10 hours of come-continuous blended utilization (the frequent boatload of Chrome tabs, occasional music or video streaming, and a video name or two). The an identical workload on the IPS model reached over 14 hours, likely thanks to that lower-res show cloak with 1Hz minimal refresh, and you would presumably stretch it longer whenever you happen to’re being cautious. (I was once no longer.) The IPS config even smashed our battery rundown test with 26 hours of continuous runtime, even beating the total Arm-based mostly totally mostly laptops we’ve examined. I am hoping we search these sort of panels in extra laptops. Enjoy telephones, dialing the refresh price way down whenever you happen to’re observing paperwork helps assign battery.The Intel Panther Lake chips in these laptops additionally lend a hand both XPS 14s with energy effectivity, however they’re no slouches within the performance division. They’ve bought solid thermals, with the fans staying rather aloof — even beneath load. And throughout stress assessments the bottom case bought rather warmth however most of the keyboard remained cool. The OLED model with the X7 chip and its integrated 12-core GPU is rather valorous for graphics-heavy tasks esteem 3D rendering in Blender, and it ought to even squeak by in taking half in some AAA video games. I ran Battlefield 6 at a lovely 50fps at 1920 x 1200 resolution on the Low preset with XeSS quandary to Ultra Performance. No longer unparalleled, however no longer potato quality — and in a skinny-and-gentle productiveness laptop computer.Dell XPS 14 (2026) / Intel Core Ultra X7 358H / 32GB / 1TBDell XPS 14 (2026) / Intel Core Ultra 5 325 / 16GB / 512GBMacBook Pro 14 / Apple M5 / 16GB / 1TBMacBook Air 15 / Apple M5 / 16GB / 1TBAsus Zenbook A16 / Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive X2E94100 / 48GB / 1TBAsus Zenbook Duo (2026) / Intel Core Ultra X9 388H (Panther Lake) / 32GB / 1TBCPU cores16810101816GPUIntel Arc B390 (12 cores)Intel Graphics (4 cores)Apple M5 (10 cores)M5 (10 cores)Adreno X2-90Arc B390 (12 cores)Geekbench 6 CPU Single288026124208417536433009Geekbench 6 CPU Multi167281102717948165672204417268Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL)544732312949059476614110156839Cinebench 2026 Single505463736727628528Cinebench 2026 Multi297320474486341363273993PugetBench for Photoshop997668231235411513109318773PugetBench for Premiere Pro (2.0.0+)30517Not tested7112261861Not tested54920Blender college room test (seconds, lower is better)49145444619861Blender cosmos test (seconds, lower is better)165Not testedNot testedNot tested670204Premiere 4K Export (lower is better)5 minutes, 40 seconds6 minutes, 21 seconds2 minutes, 47 seconds2 minutes, fifty three seconds6 minutes, 38 seconds3 minutes, 3 secondsSustained SSD reads (MB/s)6540.396808.937049.457049.457092.916762.15Sustained SSD writes (MB/s)5707.55177.147317.67480.555694.945679.413DMark Time Ogle graphics score49022770Not testedNot tested52896654Price as examined$2,899.ninety nine$1,999.ninety nine$1,949$1,499$1,699.ninety nine$2,699.99Still, less costly MacBooks beat the brand new XPS fashions in raw performance. A fanless 15-slip M5 MacBook Air wipes the ground with the entry-stage XPS 14, and it even beats the greater-fracture OLED model in most non-GPU-heavy benchmarks. Step as much as the 14-slip M5 MacBook Pro, and the scales tip even a dinky bit further in Apple’s need — plus you fetch an HDMI port and SD card slot.This brings us to the XPS 14’s greatest project: tag. When it launched, the entry-stage IPS model price $1,600. Now it’s $2,000. The OLED model with the X7 chip started at $2,200, and it now costs $2,900. Here’s for certain all because of the “ongoing market stipulations,” usually is named RAMageddon. But it doesn’t exchange the truth that this is a crap-ton of money for the performance you’re getting. Dell currently announced a lower-price XPS 13 priced at $700 ($600 for varsity kids as a transient good aquire). It’s good to survey upcoming makes an strive at competing with the MacBook Neo, however within the meanwhile Dell’s OLED XPS 14 went up in tag by the price of that entire XPS 13.1/3Side by side, you would search that the IPS show cloak (acceptable) is brighter, however the OLED (left) has nicer colours and deeper incompatibility.It’s heartbreaking to survey these sort of costs. $2,200 for the OLED XPS 14 felt justifiable for a excessive-fracture computer with inconceivable manufacture quality. But at $2,900? For $200 less you would fetch an Asus Zenbook Duo with two 14-slip OLEDs and an very excellent better Intel Panther Lake chip. And for lower than the entry-stage XPS 14, the Zenbook A16 offers three instances the RAM and a 16-slip OLED in a lighter kit. And whenever you happen to evaluate Apple’s offerings to the XPS 14 for tag to performance? It’s a bloodbath.I commend Dell for righting the ship and revitalizing the XPS line after its rebranding blunder. But although the brand new XPS laptops are better than ever, they’re now a tricky sell for contemporary causes.2026 Dell XPS 14 specs (as reviewed)Negate (OLED): 14-slip (2880 x 1800) 20-120Hz OLED touchscreen, 400 nitsDisplay (IPS): 14-slip (1920 x 1200) 1-120Hz IPS LCD, 500 nitsCPU (OLED): Intel Core Ultra X7 358HCPU (IPS): Intel Core Ultra 5 325GPU (OLED): Intel Arc B390 (12 cores)GPU (IPS): Intel Graphics (4 cores)RAM (OLED): 32GB LPDDR5X (soldered)RAM (IPS): 16GB LPDDR5X (soldered)Storage (OLED): 1TB M.2 NVMe SSDStorage (IPS): 512GB M.2 NVMe SSDWebcam: 8-megapixel / 4K HDRConnectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0Ports: 3x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C (DisplayPort 2.1 / Energy Provide), 3.5mm combo audio jackBiometrics: Dwelling windows Hey face unlockWeight: 3.0 kilos / 1.36kgDimensions (OLED): 12.19 x 8.26 x 0.58 inches / 309.5 x 209.7 x 14.6mmDimensions (IPS): 12.19 x 8.26 x 0.60 inches / 309.5 x 209.7 x 15.2mmBattery: 70WhPrice (OLED): $2,899.99Price (IPS): $1,999.99Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergeFollow topics and authors from this memoir to survey extra esteem this for your personalized homepage feed and to gain e-mail updates.Antonio G. Di Benedetto